A Christmas Mass - EF come home!

Without any EF Mass within reasonable striking distance we hummed and hawed as to what we should do and, finally, with thoughts of the children as well as Almighty God, we opted for a local OF Mass.



I will not reveal the whereabouts of the church and, in all truth, the OF Mass was not as mind numbingly awful as I had feared.

Now please, bear in mind that I am not an expert on Mass in the Ordinary Form; it is almost one year since I last attended one and as I tend to stick my nose into my missal and plough on regardless, it is still a bit of a mystery to me.

On this occasion it was hard to cut myself off as we had two small children with us who, although beautifully behaved, demanded a certain amount of attention.
So I could not help but observe a few things.
Firstly, the new translation did not appear to make too great a difference; the Mass seemed formless and without a route of progression - just a series of prayers spouted forth on a fairly random basis.

The priest conducted proceedings from the steps at the foot of the altar, facing the congregation leaving the puritan style altar (unadorned by any flower or object) bare and stark.

He started his Christmas sermon by speaking about ET, the extra terrestrial, and how he was accepted, in all innocence by a group of children.

OK, we all know the rest but it conjured up unfortunate images in my mind and, I guess, in the minds of quite a few of those present - an alien with a pointy finger - not what I wished to reflect on.

At the Offertory, the priest did move to the altar and at Communion a dilemma was solved for us as he came to distibute the host on our side of the aisle.
He was, I think, a little taken aback when we all genuflected to receive by mouth but he recovered well.

The sole elderly altar server, dressed a la monk style, distributed on the other side and, flanking the both of them were two females (I am being charitable here) who dispensed the Precious Blood to those who wished to receive it. We did not receive.

Afterwards, there was a horrendous period of washing up when the two ladies consumed what was left in the chalices and then set to a polishing the vessels.

We left having fulfilled our Sunday obligation and actually feeling that we had, in some small way, made our presence at the Mass part of our fealty to the new born Christ child.

But I found the fact that there was a general lack of respect shown to the Body of Christ in the tabernacle (only a cursory bow and zero genuflections. throughout).
And during the Credo, only a few genuflected at the critical point.

Overall, it seemed sad that these people, and their priest, had somehow forgotten the context of what they were about. They had performed a public act of prayer, not in a ritualistic sense but rather as if they were enacting a necessary labour.

It reinforced my view that the two Masses are as different as chalk is to cheese or ET to Jesus Christ.